Hector and I manage to take a road all the way to ‘The Heart of the Forest.’ It’s new asphalt- the smoothest ride we’ve had all year except for all the distractions. Things like gingerbread houses. Like lurking men in hooded cloaks. Like beckoning animals and women with backwards feet. Like spring-fed ponds with treasure sparkling in its bed. Like birds singing in such a way that they might be speaking words.

That sort of thing.

‘Say what you will about it being cheesy or overdone, ‘The Heart of the Forest’ served as the inspiration for all those weary tropes that seem a little too familiar- a little too on the nose- in this, the civilized 21^st century. One might as well say that the moon is cliché for hanging in the sky, given all those times we’ve seen it visited, colonized, and blown up in films. Nobody would suggest the moon needs to build upon what it already has going.’

We stop at the center- the heart of ‘The Heart’ I suppose. The Rangers have set up a safe-zone there, paved all over in cement and park benches. Heavy duty garbage cans form a perimeter, way more than would ever be necessary. A sign suggests they disrupt the narrative pull of ‘The Heart of the Forest’ just by being out of place. I’ve read, elsewhere, that they’ve got to change the perimeter out every once in a while, since ‘The Heart’ has a tendency to evolve and push out some fable about elves that lure children into dumpsters or what have you.

There’s a rattling in one of the cans as soon as I think about it. I try not to think about it and the sound dissipates.

The Rangers’ signs offer all sorts of warnings about ‘The Heart of the Forest,’ mostly harping on the Red Riding Hood “don’t leave the path” sentiment. That’s the trouble with the Rangers. I’m not sure they have ever understood what exactly they’re dealing with. As soon as they tell visitors not to leave the path, they sow danger on the peripheries. They create a new branch of the Wayside.

-traveler

‘The practice of shaking one’s hair out into the grass operates with the common assumption that a bird will use the hair to build its nest- a straightforward, circle-of-life type excuse for a fairly benign practice. And it’s true, only, it’s not true the way people think it is. The specific, truer-truth is that birds as a species don’t engage in this practice. The truest-truth is that there is exactly one bird that collects hair and fingernails for its nest. Hair and fingernails is all it uses.’

The nest of the Fingernail Pigeon takes up the entire rooftop of a towering hotel on the outskirts of Omaha. The hair and the fingernails droop down over an old neon sign and clatter in the wind like swarming insects- like tiny, percussive wind chimes. Tumbleweeds of hair and nails are said to be found at far as fifty miles away. Hector and I encounter our first just a few miles from ‘The Nest.’ It claws lightly at my jeans until the wind changes. It rolls off toward the highway to be crushed like a dry beetle.

The hotel only begrudgingly acknowledges the existence of the Fingernail Pigeon, which is considered endangered despite proving to be functionally immortal over decades and decades of sightings and the occasional botched poaching attempt. I ask for a room with a bird’s eye view, which is sort of code for wanting to see the unspoken thing. They charge $10 more for the privilege and throw in a pair of old binoculars.

The guide ‘Birds to Watch and Birds to Watch Out For’ describes the Fingernail Pigeon as being ‘somewhere in the middle’ of its titular scale. It’s been known to swoop down and tug and at egregious hangnails and it occasionally makes a play for hair that hasn’t naturally fallen, but neither case has ever resulted in more than a minor injury. And there’s just the one Fingernail Pigeon, so it’s likely not in most people’s general vicinity anyway.

On the other hand, it’s not a particularly rewarding ‘watch.’ It’s an ugly bird, its feet pink nubbins and its feathers crooked and frayed. It’s often seen carrying hair and fingernails tangled about its body. It tends to stare back, after a while.

This last part I find very true. I get an eyeful of the Fingernail Pigeon in its nest early on and go back to the bed to read for a while. Hector engages it from the floor, staring up until it, eventually, stares down. It’s funny, at first, but over the course of an hour the Fingernail Pigeon climbs through its nest of hair and nails to sit just outside and stare back with the sort of blank malice one sees on mannequins. When I try to close the shade, it flutters its wings against the glass, tapping and scratching.

The hotel refuses to let me change rooms.

I try to ignore the quiet standoff in the corner and eventually I do get some sleep. When I wake, the Fingernail Pigeon is gone- off to find more hair, I suppose. Hector has fallen asleep on the floor and he’s slow to rise and stiff around the joints. The rabbit’s getting old, I think. Too old to be picking fights.

-traveler

‘Not many of the Wayside’s stopovers lend themselves to the online experience, but ‘The California Manual Library,’ which boasts an impressive print collection of nearly every English manual to date, really ought to have been digitized years ago. For one, it’s a fire hazard resting tenuously in a state that is on fire for most of the year. For two, its collection, though somewhat mundane, is unrivaled. It is the American Library of Alexandria, waiting to be lost. For three, and like many Wayside attractions, few people ever visit ‘The California Manual Library’ on purpose, meaning that its practical value has been relegated to a semi-interesting restroom stop off the interstate.

Rumor has it that ‘The California Manual Library’ resists digitizing due to an amount of forbidden knowledge that, on the open web, might call the wrong sort of attention to itself. It’s the author’s opinion that anyone who would want to do it harm would have lit the match decades ago.’

I’m halfway through a ream of paper that claims to be a manual for pumping blood through the human body via contractions of the heart when I feel my own heart begin to studder. I focus on it and in my panic I’m able to compress.

Once.

Twice.

Good.

As soon as I go back to the manual my heart stops again. I squeeze with my cardiac muscle, too hard this time, and feel my arteries stiffen with pressure. I calm and squeeze again. Again. Again.

With fifteen minutes’ practice I’m able to put the function of my heart on the backburner of my active mind and bring a sliver of my focus back to the cardiac manual. I study an appendix for reengaging the heartbeat as an automatic process and have it down in half an hour or so but when I think back to the passage that switched me to manual, I find the world going black again.

By closing, I’ve trained myself in both processes, which may seem like an accomplishment but is really more trouble than it’s worth. I find a manual for my phone and finally figure out how to turn night mode off. I read about all the wrong things I’ve been doing with Hector’s diet, which explains the gas. Still, the circulatory override sits there in the back of my brain. It’s there even as we pass the state line, a sore tooth that can’t be pulled. I buy a cheap set of headphones at the next gas station and set to burying it as best I can.

-traveler

‘It’s difficult to encapsulate the Wayside, except to say that it is experienced most keenly on backroads and in backrooms. Try it out, why don’t you? Try it out at ‘James Vapes’ and see what sort of ugly niches you can find in the way-back of a head shop now that weed is safe and legal.’

I have never vaped, myself, but in the dozen or so circumstances in which I found myself second-hand vaping, I’ve been surprised at how diverse the flavors tend to be and how pleasant they are in comparison to your traditional smoke-based inhalants. I say this as a man who has smoked plenty in his life- who has ignored the sharp, chemical edge of haphazard drugs for a moment’s fleeting relief. Who has burned his nose and esophagus and the tips of his fingers, trying to squeeze comfort from the embers of something unpleasant.

Vaping seems downright pleasant, if not a little uncool, but with no real intention of starting a new habit, I never suspected I would find myself in a vape shop and I arrive wholly unprepared.

‘James Vapes’ is the sort of business where everything is kept behind the counter without labels or pricetags, the sort of place where you’re expected to know what you want before you walk in. The man behind the counter looks up at me as I enter. His eyes eventually fall to Hector, in my arms.

“Weird,” he says, and smoke pours from his mouth.

“James?” I ask.

He laughs, billowing sweet vapor into the air. “No.”

“Cool,” I say. I haven’t said that in years.

“What can I do for you?”

“Uh-” I squint in the hazy shadows behind the counter and find I can’t identify a single thing. There are wattages and volumes- heat indications and potency meters. There are strains of nicotine and cannabis and mixes of the two that don’t make any sense to me. I grimace and hope I look discerning. “None of this is, uh, quite what I’m looking for.”

The vapor emitting from the man’s mouth comes out low and thick. “What are you looking for?”

This is a good sign, according to my research. It’s all a part of the dance we have to do in order to get past the bead curtain- a sort of Konami code for back room access: rebuff, rebuff, inquire, nod, and proceed.

If you’re keeping track, we’re on the second rebuff. “I’m not sure you’re going to have it.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have anything…” and here’s where the nuance is. This part is all about using the right words. Wilder for meat. Lower for deeds. More engaging for people. I take a chance: “…more substantial?”

The man sighs and his face disappears in the fog. He’s grinning when it clears. “Can you keep a secret?”

Nod.

“Follow me, then.”

The beaded curtain clatters as we step into a pantry. There are a few vaping devices here, each advertising wattages and temperatures that seem outrageous for something that’s designed to enter a human mouth. Mostly, though, the shelves are stocked with vials of strangely flavored vape liquid. No more blueberry. No more cotton candy. The glass in the backroom advertises things like ‘nostalgia’ and ‘haircut.’ I see a vial labeled ‘locker room,’ another that just says ‘boy spit.’

Not-James has his eyes on me. He’s quickly filling the little room with his fog, thick and sour. “Is this more to your liking?”

The shelves are split by a thin door, one that leads even further back. I consider it and ask: “When’s your next shipment?”

“We’re fully stocked, if that’s what you’re asking. Should I put something on order?”

“If you don’t have it already, I’m not sure you’ve got the right supplier.”

“If you have a name…”

“Do you have anything… (headier? thicker?) more tailored?”

“Ah,” he says, a phantom in his own gas, “You should have said. I assume you’ve brought a sample?”

I nod.

“Then follow me.”

The man ignores the thin door and tugs one of the shelves instead. The vials toast each other as the wall comes forward on a set of hidden hinges. A machine sits idle in the room ahead, all pistons and pressurized canisters.

“How’s this?” The man is indiscernible from the shadows, a cloud in the dark.

There’s no more doors, thank god.

“This is exactly what I was looking for,” I say, without knowing what it is I’m looking at.

I leave ‘James’ Vapes’ with a small vial of my own blood, condensed into a thick goo that, inserted into any modern vaporizer, should allow me to inhale and expel it as a red cloud. After all that build up, it was all I could think of.

Not-James looked disappointed. He told me blood was the most common material component offered to the machine. I recognized that it was almost too commonplace for such a far backroom. He said much the same himself, before disappearing into a grate in the floor. A sub-backroom?

I’ll let that one slide, I think.

-traveler

The ‘National Childproofing Center’ is halfway through rebranding when Hector and I arrive. It’s difficult to tell exactly what it was they were pretending to be, previous. Murals cover the exterior walls, each depicting a photorealistic monkey riding a skateboard through a generic cartoon environment. Each monkey has a thought bubble and each thought is “RAD!” All of the monkeys are holding ice cream and what might be candy or prescription pills. A banner has torn loose on one side and whips about in the wind. It takes me a moment to read it:

“Tell your parents: all of this is FREE!”

The banner catches on the razor wire fence between the parking lot and the ‘Center’ proper. A siren sounds and lights flash. A stern voice blares over the speaker system: NO NO NO.

It all quiets down again after a few moments- someone must realized it was a false alarm. I heave my pack over my shoulder and hold Hector, wriggling, in the other arm. I approach the fence, show my ID, and am let in, no problem.

‘Legally speaking, yes, ‘The National Childproofing Center’ is required to stand by all of their offers but they must be claimed by children and children rarely make it inside without some sort of legally dubious work on the part of adults. The few ‘success stories’ have all settled out of court- some for quite a bit of money but none for ‘real life hoverboards’ or ‘a super sharp flaming ninja sword’ or even ‘infinite ice cream on demand delivered by a talking dog.’

The fact of the matter is that ‘The National Childproofing Center’ is willing to lose some money if it means maintaining their stellar reputation for authenticating the childproofing standards of corporate clients. Parents can rest easy when they see the ‘NCC Guarantee’ seal on a vacuuming robot or an automatic litterbox, knowing neither will grind up, burn, or otherwise consume their curious toddlers. If the occasional mutant talking dog or two escape and breed in the wild around ‘The National Childproofing Center,’ well, that’s a price we pay as a society for the safety of our children.’

The ‘NCC’ is actually paying people to take the dozen or so monkeys they stocked, but I’m not really ready to be a parent to something quite so mobile and intelligent so I turn down the offer of a thousand bucks and a strange new sibling for Hector and eat some cheap ice cream and fall off a skateboard before I decide it’s probably time to go.

I’m approaching the ‘heir lock,’ a stupid pun for a system that’s designed to keep children from rushing the exit as adult visitors leave, when the straps of my pack pull back hard on my shoulders. I lose my balance and send Hector scurrying from my arms as I desperately try to separate myself from whatever has grown sentient inside. Alarms sound as the pack squirms across the floor and nearby screens, which had previously been showing a sneak preview of some new kids movie, flash over to an x-ray livestream of the scene as it’s playing out. From the looks of it, a small skeleton is attempting to escape from my backpack and it’s only until after it finally pushes the clasp open that I realize it’s just a living child.

“I DID IT!” the child screams as it’s surrounded by ‘NCC’ security, “You have to give me my monkey now! You have to give me my monkey!”

A previously inconspicuous woman runs to join the kid and shouts much the same thing as I quietly gather my empty pack and herd Hector back into my arms. I’m scooching backward, trying to decide whether I’m actually liable for anything that’s just happened, when I run into a man standing behind me. He drops a garbage sack on the floor. It’s my stuff- the stuff that was supposed to be where the child was.

I recognize the man and I recognize the woman as well when I give her a harder look,. They talked to me at the diner this morning- friendly, I assumed, but likely just distracting me while their kid climbed into my backpack.

The man puts a hand on my shoulder. He isn’t even looking at me- he’s drinking the chaos in with a growing smile.

“You’ll understand,” he says, “When you have a kid of your own.”

-traveler